Change
by Padlei
Summary: Introspective one-shot. Anakin and Padmé reflecting on change in their lives.


**Change**

**Characters**: A/P  
**Rating**: PG  
**Timeline**: From TPM to ROTS  
**Genre**: Reflection, fluff, angst  
**Summary**: Both Anakin and Padmé reflecting on change.  
**A/N**: Wrote this viggie to get over the DWB I had on Shattered Glass at the time and anything related to SW anyway. Don't ask me why I got inspired over this, I don't know it myself.

Thanks to **leia_naberrie** for beta-ing this and being a source of inspiration and support.

* * *

_I don't want things to change…_

_But you can't stop the change… Anymore than you can stop the suns from setting…_

_-TPM Anakin & Shmi_

_

* * *

_

**I**

She smelled so clean.

That was the first thing entering his mind when she was suddenly close to him, watching the binary sunset in the distance and silently holding his –dirty- hand.

Her hand covered his completely.

It was so warm.

Anakin looked up and watched Padmé Naberrie shyly.

She looked down and grinned, squeezing his hand.

He looked down.

He was blushing.

* * *

There was such cuteness in Anakin's blushing Padmé held back a chuckle.

His little hand was dirty and sweaty but she held onto it like a lifeline.

Somehow she knew the boy beside her didn't really mind.

She felt strong next to him, her doubts washed away. Padmé breathed in the hot air of Tatooine and exhaled roughly.

She wouldn't think of Naboo…

_She couldn't_.

Standing next to a boy who looked at her with adoration made her feel stronger than this.

They would make it through.

_Hope is what keeps us alive_, said her father all the time.

She would hold onto that too.

* * *

**II**

Her smile was what he remembered most.

He would lay at night, listening to Obi-Wan's soft snoring and be glad he was finally left alone to his thoughts.

Padmé was beautiful in his dreams, in his reveries.

Strange how she _felt_ so far away. As if when he was close to her on Tatooine, then Naboo, he could feel her physically. Obi-Wan said it was the Force, that he could feel Padmé like he could feel every living thing around him.

Anakin had never told his Master it was more than that.

He would talk to her in his reveries when Obi-Wan would leave him alone. Her and his mother. Thinking of his mother would make him cry until he felt he was too old to cry.

_Small hands reaching to wipe tears angrily. Obi-Wan always sleeping peacefully beside him. He would never hear. And if he did, did he care?_

So thinking of Padmé was thinking of the future, of something positive to hold onto. He would look at her and tell her he was a Jedi.

Maybe she would look at him with admiration, like she did after the podrace…

* * *

Thinking of Padmé became painful very soon.

He didn't remember the first time his feelings for her changed. Suddenly he was noticing little things when she made a speech on the Holonet. He would focus on her lips and realize the room was suddenly too hot around him.

In his dreams, he didn't see her the same way either.

Even in his reveries Padmé wasn't the image he had kept in his head.

She had changed.

The day she was made a Senator, he truly realized she was a woman now.

And he wasn't looking at her like the little boy he had been on Tatooine.

Something had changed.

* * *

Padmé hadn't thought of the little boy helping her on Tatooine a lot during her reign.

Sometimes she would look at the little jappor pendant she kept in one of her dressing rooms. She would smile and recall the old times.

Politics were weary. Thinking of a time when a little boy admired her always soothed her in a way she couldn't explain.

He was the little thing part of her past that would never change, a sweet memory she could always hold onto when times were rough.

For some odd reason though, one night, she wondered how he looked like now. If she would recognize him if she ever saw him in the Senate or in a reception.

Was he already a Jedi or still a Padawan?

Had he kept the smirk she always found so cute?

She smiled wistfully.

What was the point? Whatever happened in Anakin's life she hoped he was happy at least.

* * *

**III**

Anakin.

_Anakin?_

In her mind he was still a little boy. And suddenly she had seen a man in front of her. Blue eyes and a devastating smile.

The same admiration in his eyes perhaps. But something more too.

Even he had changed.

For some silly reason she had hated Anakin for changing so much, for not being the little boy from Tatooine.

She hated herself for having a hard time reconciling the two Anakin.

_He's that little boy from Tatooine. He didn't really change…_

But when he smiled, her heart beat faster.

* * *

Padmé had changed.

More beautiful. More mature. More self confident. With this hint of toughness he hadn't seen in her eyes when she posed as a handmaiden. With a little bit of suffering in the same eyes too.

Yet he had welcomed those changes.

Because somehow his feelings had suddenly made sense.

He had looked into her eyes and he had known.

He had been _sure_.

The feeling only grew when she laughed, when she spoke and he realized her voice had changed as well.

That was when he realized he had fallen for her. Everything had morphed in one feeling, one making sense.

He loved everything about her.

* * *

Surprising how fast Padmé accepted the changes in Anakin's personality. His strong opinions, his boldness, his frank honesty that didn't really suit a young man - _but she loved it_ - the way his eyes twinkled and the deep sound of his laughter.

She was as fascinated by Anakin as she had been then on Tatooine.

Even though the way he looked at her had changed and made her knees weak.

Even though she hated the lack of control he now inspired in her.

She didn't really remember when she realized everything had changed inside her.

When she realized she didn't love him like she loved the little boy on Tatooine then.

_That_ change scared her.

* * *

Everything changed when their lips touched.

One instant in time.

The line was drawn.

The warmth of his lips against hers, softness, her heart exploding in her chest…

There was no boy to hide behind.

She knew then she was lost.

Lost to a man who couldn't be hers.

She hated change even more then.

* * *

Anakin welcomed change for the first time in forever when Padmé looked him in the eye and repeated her love for him. She squeezed his mechanical hand and looked at him the way he had always dreamt of. He pressed her against him as she sighed against his neck contently.

He was forsaking the Jedi code and he didn't care.

She was his wife.

He knew everything would change, the war, their relationship.

But as long as he had her, he wasn't afraid.

* * *

**IV**

"You've changed."

Anakin opened his eyes and found himself looking into Padmé's brown eyes very close to his face. His flesh fingers reached out to caress her face, losing himself in the moment.

Before he would have to leave again…

"What do you mean?" he inquired, letting his fingers slide to her back tracing her spine softly.

She frowned and looked down, one finger making patterns on his chest.

"The war changed you," she said in a whisper.

He sighed.

"It changed me," he confirmed. "But deep inside, _I'm still the little boy you knew-_"

The effect he had counted on happened. Padmé put her fingers on his mouth, stopping him from talking. But she was smiling again and that soft loving smile she had before she kissed him washed away the sudden fear coiling in his stomach.

* * *

Anakin was changing.

He used to be the one cheering her, making her smile and laugh. Now she had to take upon herself to hide her sadness and ache because she wanted to make him smile. She wanted that deep ache in his eyes to disappear. She couldn't stand to almost hear her husband's heart break a little more every time he came home.

She would hold him in her arms in the vain hope she could keep the Anakin she fell in love with beside her.

It worked most of the time.

One hour later he would almost always look into her eyes with that quiet worship he always had just for her.

She would feel strong again.

* * *

**V**

After the initial shock when she found out, Padmé had to face the change in her body.

Curves deepening.

Her stomach getting bigger each day, it seemed.

The life she could feel growing inside her.

It was exciting.

But scaring at the same time.

* * *

She watched her husband's eyes widen after her news. Him trying to process all this.

The deep, terrible change it would entail in their lives.

But Anakin took this much better than she initially did.

And in his smile she felt the strength to fight it all.

This change was a blessing.

* * *

"We are going to be parents," she whispered in his ear, breathing in his skin and hair, rekindling herself with her husband.

He smiled though he was visibly exhausted.

"I am aware of that," he said with a hint of teasing.

"It's going to change our relationship," she explained, "not to mention-"

Anakin sighed. "I don't want to think about what it entails. Only what's affecting us and our family."

His flesh and warm hand caressed her stomach tenderly as he talked.

"A child will change _us_," she said softly. "Are you ready to share me?"

He chuckled.

In his eyes, the feeling hadn't changed.

"I love you." He said, pulling her closer. "Nothing can change that. Having our family will only make it stronger."

She caressed his cheek in the darkness and kissed him, feeling tears threatening to escape her closed eyes and lost herself in his tender caresses.

* * *

He could feel himself changing.

He wanted to escape it, wanted to ignore it.

And yet there was no denying it. Anakin knew the war had changed him deeply. And he knew nothing would ever be the same again after killing Dooku, _the memory of power surging in his veins as he watched life leaving the old Count's eyes…_

But when he was with Padmé he could escape it all. She soothed all worries. She was a real shelter. Her and the life he felt beneath his hand.

But even so, he knew nothing would ever be the same again.

Because now, whenever he looked at her, he only saw her dying face.

* * *

**VI**

There was a moment as he flew through space with an unusual quiet R2, when he felt calm enough to feel the poison in his veins.

A small moment when he realized he had looked at Padmé differently for the first time ever.

A moment when this wasn't just a mission or a means to an end.

A moment when he was proud of himself for slaughtering the Jedi. When he looked at Padmé and only saw what he had managed to save with his sole power.

And even then there had been something in him hating Padmé's hands on him.

She didn't know _what_ she was touching.

Dirt, blood, poison.

This moment vanished.

When he realized tears blurred his vision and the control boards.

When he almost felt the poison spreading throughout his veins.

He had changed, he was truly changing deep inside, his thoughts, his mind, his heart were turned upside down.

Something recoiled deep inside him.

No.

_He wasn't changing._

A means to an end.

That was all it ever was.

Something he had to do for Padmé, regardless of the consequences.

_Too late to turn back…_

_

* * *

_

There was nothing in his eyes.

No devotion, no tenderness, no love.

Only madness. Darkness. Evil.

Padmé stumbled away from her husband.

He wasn't Anakin anymore…

How had she missed the changes?

How had it all come to this?

Something in her burnt then, fell, crashed, making her chest heave.

Anakin had changed.

Anakin was no more.

* * *

Something deep inside of him was stronger than the pain and the horrible suffering in the Mustafar aftermath.

It was stronger than witnessing his own body turned into a monstrosity.

For the first time he really willed himself to fight the change in him.

He reached out to Padmé with his mind and heart and whole self.

Turning back wasn't too late, was it?

_He could fight change, he could make her come back._

The words fell on him with the force of a thousand bricks.

It destroyed him from the inside out.

Everything was over.

There was nothing to change.

For there was nothing left.


End file.
